BIRTH OF THE NATION 1607 - 1776

# 1 _He was old now__white headed and weather-faced__but his memories were rich. He had been present at creation__at the birth of the nation. What scenes he had witnessed: Stamp Act protests, rousing debates in the Massachusetts legislature, ministers passionately preaching freedom from the pulpit, crowds crying, "No taxation without representation!"__and tons of tea spreading like brown ink in Boston Harbor. He has almost been captured by British troops at Lexington in 1775, when the shots were fired that changed the world. He had served as a delegate to the Continental Congress__as the most famous man there, by some estimate. He could remember the faces, the voices, the votes for independence__and the fresh, new appearance of the Declaration of Independence, which bore his signature.
# 2 _He was Samuel Adams, and in March 1797 he was seventy-four years old. He had served God and the people almost his entire life, and he was not finished yet. Not quite. He had been a political writer, an agitator, a legislator, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a United States congressman, a member of the Massachusetts convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts__and now, in his final years, he was the state's governor.
 He had seen so much__a grand, sweeping survey of America-in-the-making-and yet, he still had important duties to perform.
# 3 _One of them was before him now. It was his responsibility as governor to issue an official proclamation for the commonwealth of Massachusetts. This was no frivolous public statement. It did not resemble future proclamations issued by governors to promote tourism, celebrate sports victories, or recognize beauty queens, state fairs, and cooking festivals. On March 20, 1797, founding father Samuel Adams, now governor of Massachusetts, issued an official state proclamation calling for a "Day of Solemn Fasting and Prayer" in Massachusetts.
# 4 _It was not an unusual government action in eighteenth-century America: legislatures, governors, and the Anerican Congress had officially called for days of thanksgiving and had set aside official days for prayer and fasting. On the designated days, normal activities ceased in most places. Businesses closed. Traffic disappeared. Countless Americans assembled in their churches. Ministers of the Gospel, the most respected professionals in America, led them in worship, confessing sins, giving thanks, and respectfully imploring the blessings of Almighty God.
# 5 _Adams now did so again. With the "advice and consent" of the state legislatute, he officially proclaimed that a day in May would be set aside throughtout Massachusetts "for the purpose of public fasting prayer." On that day, "Ministers of the Gospel, with their respected congregationd" were asked to "assmble together and seriously consider, and with one untied voice confess our past sins and transgressions, with holy resolutions, by the Grace of God, to turn our feet into the path of His Law__Humbly beseeching Him to endue us with all the Christian spirit of Piety, Benevolence and the Love of our Country; and that in all our public deliberations we may be possessed of a sacred regard to the fundamental principles of our free elective civil Constitutions. . . .'' As governor, Adams also called on the people of Massachusetts to pray for the state's businesses, its industry, its education system, for the other American states, and for the national goverment. "And I do hereby recommend," he added, "that all unnecessary labour and recreation may be suspended on the said day." The proclamation concluded with an official request that would undoubetedly seem statling to many in a distant, future America:
I concede that we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the World__That the rod of tyrants may be broken into pieces, and the oppressed made Free__That wars may cease in all the Earth, and that the confusions that are and have been among the Nations may be overruled for the promoting and speedily bringing on that holy and happy period, when the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and all the people willingly bow to the Sceptre of Him who is the Prince of Peace.
# 6 _By issuing such an official proclamation, were the governor and legislature of Massachusetts violating the United States Constitution? Not to their thinking. Samuel Adams had signed the Declaration of Independence and had voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, he not only understood the original intent of America's founding documents__he had helped make them. So had many others in his day, and they too had crafted, assisted, or observed First Day proclamations such as the one Samuel Adams issued in 1797. For them, America's foundation of faith was common knowledge, and they viewed American liberty as a legacy of the Judeo-Christian worldview. In their day, it was an accepted fact that American and English law were based on the Higher Law of the Bible__ans so were America's founding documents."The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentleman could unite," wrote founding father John Adams. "And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity. . . ." America's founding fathers, however, did not act alone: their decisive, deliberate actions reflected the common values of the people they represented. They were the real founding fathers__the people of Colonial America whose values forged the nation. Today, they are largely forgotten. So too are many of the key events that motivated them, such as the Great Awakening, and many of the leaders who inspired them, such as Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies, George Whitefield, even Samuel Adams. Fading too among the American public is awareness of the nations, founding values, such as Higher Law and inalienable rights.
# 7 _Some modern historians, such as the Jewish scholar Abraham Katsh, have labored mightily to preserve a record of America's faith__based founding. Of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, Katsh wrote: "there runs through these two prime instruments of American government the deeper meaning and higher purpose of a constant regard for principles and religious ideads, based on a profound sympathy with the Scriptures. . . ." The historical record is clear: America was forged on faith. But is that foundational fact common knowledge in contemporary America? Or has it been cast aside amid the clutter of modern distractions? Or perhaps lost by the neglect of the disinterested?
# 8 _In a contemporary classroom survey of upper-level American university students, all demonstrated extensive knowledge of popular culture-music and musicians, actors and actresses, star performers of the NBA, NFL, and NASCAR. They correctly identified the leading contestants in a televised talent show and the titles of contemporary motion pictures. When queried on topics from American history, all demonstrated a general knowledge that was decidedly superior to the random on-the-street interviews frequently cited in the modern news madia. Fewer than 10 percent, however, correctly indentified Jonathan Edwards. One percent knew of George Whitefield. Twice as many thought Samuel Adams was an alcoholic beverage rather than a founding father. One percent recognized the Great Awakening. None__not one__was able to correctly identify John Calvin's Institutes or apparently had ever heard of Higher Law.
# 9 _A century after his death , New England theologian Jonathan Edwards, whose 1741 sermon launched the Great Awakening, was deemed so important that Harvard historian Gerorge Bancroft devoted numerous pages to him in his epic History of the United States of America. Fifty years later, in the early twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize__winning historian Edward Channing depicted Edwards as a "keen intellect" who "united wonderful skill in the use of language and remarkable power of expression." In the same era, Encyclopaedia Britannica described Edwards as "an earnest, devout Christian and a man of blameless life," who had achieved a "great work" of scholarship. When New York University established the nationally acclaimed Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1901, Edwards was honored as one of its first inductees, and was enshrined alongside Gerorge Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.
# 10 _By the twenty-first century, however, Americans and their heroes had changed. Jonathan Edwards was now unkown to most and discredited by others. In contrast to the respectful treatment Edwards had received from biographers a century earlier, he was now denounced for "high-handedness and bigotry" by a leading online student encyclopedia. The famous sermon that sparked the Great Awakening was dismissed as an "appeal to religious fear," and the faith in Christ inspired by his preaching was belittled as emotional "convulsions and hysteria." As for the Great Awakening__the unprecedented revival that inspired American independence? It was merely an odd "religious frenzy," the encyclopedia's student readers were informed, which spun "out of control" and stifled "liberal interpretation of doctrine."